Try Something New

Consider shooting for one or more of these goals this year

Interested in a new goal other than your first ultra? The following five challenges are quantifiable, require reaching for most of us, and involve bookmarks along the way – key elements of what makes a good goal. They're worth doing for their own sake, but will also likely bring significant benefits to the rest of your training and racing. And you might just find your running going in a whole new direction because of chasing one.

1) RUN YOUR FASTEST MILE OF THE LAST 5 YEARS

Dropping down in distance means stepping up your commitment to speed training, but the work required to run a fast mile will translate to improved turnover, running form and efficiency, and therefore make PRs in longer races more likely as well. This challenge requires you to continue putting in the long runs, tempo runs and interval workouts that are probably part of your program. But you also need to introduce (or reintroduce) regular fast running, in the form of what veteran coach Roy Benson calls "windless windsprints."

Here's how to incorporate Benson's speed work into your training regimen: Once a week, hit the local track (or a measured flat stretch of asphalt) for a series of about 10 50m-100m pickups at your goal mile race pace. For example, if your goal is to break 6:00 in the mile, run the 100m pick-ups in 22 or 23 seconds. After each, take a generous recovery ("a vacation," Benson says) in the form of a 200m walk. (Or, if you're using a heart rate monitor, wait for your heart rate to slow to less than 60 percent of your maximum.) Then go again. The total volume of fast running in one session will be relatively low – at most, 1,000m – and you'll have introduced faster-turnover running without allowing lactic acid to accumulate and muscles to tighten up. "This workout would be a way you could get the neurological and strength and flexibility benefits of fast running, but without the risk of an injury of doing high-intensity speed work that most people would automatically assume they need to start doing," says Benson.

Increase the number of pick-ups each week, up to as many as 20 or 24 in one session. After about a month of this once-a-week workout, increase the distance of the "dash" to 200m, with about half as many reps as you were doing for the 100s. When you're able to complete 10 or 12 200m intervals at goal mile race pace, you're ready to start doing 400m intervals, at which point "you're turning the workouts into high-intensity efforts that are going to condition your cardiorespiratory system, not just your neuromuscular system," Benson says. Start with six or eight 400s, with full recovery (a 400m jog) in between, and work up to 10 or 12.

Once you've done three to four weeks of 400s, replace that workout with 10 to 12 100s, just like you did at the start of your training, but now run significantly faster than goal mile race pace. For the runner who was running 100s in 22 seconds in week one, try to hit 19 seconds for each 100, which is closer to 5:00 mile pace. These faster intervals will allow you to feel more relaxed and comfortable biomechanically when you're running at your (slower) race pace. Here, too, take full recovery; for example, run a fast 100 on a straightaway, then jog 300m before your next 100.

Finish each weekly speed session with six 10-second hill sprints on any incline you can find near the track. These hill sprints will help you develop all your major working muscles – your arches, calves, Achilles tendons, hip flexors, knees, arms – so you have the requisite power to run fast. Benson recommends a 10-second limit on these hill sprints, again so that "you don't get deeply into lactic acid and wind up straining something." Take a complete recovery of at least 90 seconds after each hill sprint so that you can run each one all-out.

The weekly speed work and hill sprints will activate musculature you haven't used in years, and give you the turnover and power to run your fastest mile since W's first term in the White House. You'll likely reap the rewards of your newfound footspeed in racing longer distances as well

2) RUN A 100-MILE WEEK

If you're taking your weekly mileage into triple digits for the first time, plan on running the added miles at no more than 80 percent of your maximum heart rate.

"My experience is that athletes are more likely to get hurt running lower mileage at a higher intensity than higher mileage at a lower to moderate intensity," says Pete Rea, the elite athlete coach at the ZAP Fitness training center in Blowing Rock, N.C. "As long as the increase is aerobic in nature, meaning that you're not adding additional hard miles of running, you can make mileage jumps pretty quickly."

How quickly, of course, depends on your starting point. While Rea says it's safe for a healthy, 80-miles-per-week runner to work up to the century mark in as little as four or five weeks, someone looking to double his regular mileage from 40 or 50 should do so over the course of a year or even two. After all, the point is to get to that century mark intelligently and enjoyably, not simply to slog your way through 14.3 miles a day for a week to check the goal off your to-do list.

About those 14.3 miles per day: Many runners doing this kind of mileage don't run "singles," meaning one run per day. Adding even three doubles to your schedule can easily pad your total by 12–15 miles with less stress than adding those miles to your main run as you build in recovery and refueling time between runs.

Rea emphasizes not only that the added miles be easy ones, but also that you plot your training schedule as a series of steps up and down in mileage – not a steady climb upwards.

"Make every third or fourth week a down week, no matter how good you feel, just to hedge your bets in terms of health," Rea counsels. For example, you might run 84 miles one week, 87 the next, and then dial the mileage back to below 80 on the third week. Then you could run weeks of 91 and 94 before another rest week of 80. Follow that series with weeks of 97 and 101 before backing off to 80 again. (Strange but true: It's common to feel stale and sluggish during the lower-mileage weeks.)

During the "on" weeks, you may find yourself feeling tired, day in and day out – but the rewards in improved fitness are worth the fatigue. "I would tell people experimenting with high mileage that it's OK to be a little tired all of the time," says Rea. "It's just the nature of the beast and your body will, ultimately, adapt."